Living 25 miles South of Washington DC we are well off the flyways so don’t get high numbers or variety of hummers like you and George. Most of the high traffic hummer flyways are either out on the Atlantic coast to the East, or along the Blue Ridge Mountains 80 miles West. Our home is located on the edge of a 150 yd wide and mile long heavily wooded green belt that leads to the Occoquan River that runs for 15 miles West to Manassas, VA.
What few hummers there are in the area appear to cruise the tree line looking for flowers with nectar. The most we see at any one time are 3 to 4. These are usually the summer resident Ruby-Throated hummers and all are female.
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Female Ruby-Throated hummer perched on feeder
We do have a lot of fly through visitors, mostly male Ruby-Throats that pass through on a daily basis as we go through 2 liters of feed syrup a week keeping two big feeders filled. I’ve also planted a number of red honeysuckle vines around the back yard and next to the arbor that leads into the garden.
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Female Ruby-Throated hummer feeding on Red Honeysuckle
We use the standard 4:1 sugar to water mix for hummer feed syrup and found it’s not necessary to boil the mixture. The little beasties have all kinds of pollen and wild yeast on their tongues that would cause even boiled syrup to cloud over in 3 to 4 days if it lasted that long.
I make my own ant guards out of 35 mm plastic film canisters and a short length of coat hanger. I bend the coat hanger with a loop at the top then heat the other end over a candle and plunge through the base of the film canister to get a tight rain seal. Then I bend a flat loop in the middle to suspend the film canister and a hook at the bottom to attach the feeder.
I mount the ant guard as shown in the photo below and stuff the underside with cotton balls so they’re protected from the rain then give them a shot of Ant & Roach killer. No ants on the feeders for the last five years.
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Home-did Ant Guard
With the woods only a few feet from the deck, we see a lot of local wildlife day and night. Alvin was a newcomer this year and has been a constant source of amusement each day as he is twice as fast as the local tree rats and easily out races them to the peanuts we drop off the deck. As you’ll see in the sequence below, Alvin is very adept at stuffing his cheeks with peanuts. You can alnmost hear the critter talk...
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Hey there… I’m Cool Hand Alvin and I can stuff 3 whole peanuts in my cheeks and still leave room for one more in case I want to set a new Olympic Record
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Two down and one more to go
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Lets see… Does the big end go in first… or the small end?
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It’s a stretch, but I’ve almost got it. I’m sure glad I licked it first
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I’m so good… Akk… I hope they stay in
Multimedia File Viewing and Clickable Links are available for Registered Members only!! You need to or Wow this is Cool!! With my cheeks stuffed with peanuts like this, I can make like Demosthenes and practice speaking like Svenn with a Norwegian accent so I can say, “STFU My Friend… If you’re not using Oxygen Therapy at a high flow rate to abort your cluster headaches and shadows… Yer Reeealy Stuuupid!”
Although we don’t go through as much hummer syrup as you and George, we do go through 30 lbs of dry cat food a week feeding our pack of wild raccoons that come up on the deck to eat each night.
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A litter of four Kits and Sow (their mother)
The four kits above are part of an eleven-kit addition to the pack that came up on the deck to eat while Svenn and Bente were staying with us. They tend to come up on the deck in shifts to avoid conflict, but they’re not always successful keeping their schedules straight. When an overlap happens, we can have seven to ten kits and a couple sows up on the deck at one time. The kits all look so much alike, even to each other, that smell is the only reliable source of identification. Half the time the nose-to-nose greetings end up with snarling and yipping back-downs and a quick run to hide behind their respective sows.
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